English

Inequalities, identities, and bounds for divided differences of the exponential function

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2025-10-14 v1 Numerical Analysis Numerical Analysis

Abstract

Let exp[x0,x1,,xn]\exp[x_0,x_1,\dots,x_n] denote the divided difference of the exponential function. (i) We prove that exponential divided differences are log-submodular. (ii) We establish the four-point inequality exp[a,a,b,c]exp[d,d,b,c]+exp[b,b,a,d]exp[c,c,a,d]exp[a,b,c,d]20 \exp[a,a,b,c]\,\exp[d,d,b,c]+\exp[b,b,a,d]\,\exp[c,c,a,d]-\exp[a,b,c,d]^2 \ge 0 for all a,b,c,dR a,b,c,d \in \mathbb{R} . (iii) We obtain sharp two-sided bounds for exp[x0,,xn]\exp[x_0,\dots,x_n] at fixed mean and variance; as a consequence, we derive their large-input asymptotics. (iv) We present closed-form identities for divided differences of the exponential function, including a convolution identity and summation formulas for repeated arguments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.10724,
  title  = {Inequalities, identities, and bounds for divided differences of the exponential function},
  author = {Qiulin Zeng and Nicholas Ezzell and Arman Babakhani and Itay Hen and Lev Barash},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.10724},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

16 pages,

R2 v1 2026-07-01T06:32:31.198Z